ASWF + AOUSD – Using Open Technologies as a Competitive Advantage

GUILLAUME BROSSARD: Hello, everyone. Welcome to today's talk, Using Open Technologies as a Competitive Advantage. My name is Guillaume Brossard, and I will be your speaker for this talk. I am the director of engineering for the ShotGrid products family, a production management and review ecosystem for film and game industry. My background is in computer rendering engineering and cloud services development.

I've been with Autodesk for over 10 years, and I joined the ShotGrid team at acquisition as a DevOps engineer, where I led the infrastructure team through its cloud transition. I am also part of the Academy Software Foundation Open Review Initiative Technical Steering Committee.

Before we start, let me remind you of our safe harbor statement. This talk may cover forward-looking statements and regarding future development efforts. Nothing in the presentation today represents a promise or a guarantee of delivery, so plans are called to change and will change. Please do not make any decision upon reliance of these statements.

Creating movies involves a lot of work, including delivering productions with increasingly impressive special effects and realistic computer-generated scenes, all while meeting tight deadlines and compressed budgets. Collaboration and efficiency are essential as complexity increases.

This talk will use real-life example from the film and game industry to show how open technologies can help clients improving collaboration and efficiency, while providing strategic benefits for enterprises to contributing to these open technologies. We will start by providing an overview of what open technologies are and how the film and game industries has been at the forefront of using them. We will then introduce two organizations-- the Academy Software Foundation and the Alliance for Open USD, and explain their role in the industry and the role Autodesk plays in them. Finally, we will review a recent use case in which Autodesk decided to open source a sci-tech Academy Award review software, RV, demonstrate why and how Autodesk choose that path for that product.

Thank you for joining us today. To help setting the context, let's start by looking at our open technologies, our approach at Autodesk.

This talk will focus on two types of open technologies-- open standards and open source. Open standards are technical standards that are developed and maintained in an open, collaborative manner by a community of experts. Open source, on the other hand, are software application which the code is freely available for the community to contribute and distribute. Both solves similar problems.

Open standards enable interoperability and compatibility between different systems and technologies, allowing them to work seamlessly together. This means that products and services that adhere to open standards can easily be integrated with other products and services, increasing their overall value for users. For example, open standards for file formats, such as PDF and HTML ensure that documents can be opened and viewed across different devices and platforms regardless of the software or hardware being used.

Open technologies promote innovation by providing a common platform for collaboration and experimentation. By removing proprietary barriers, it allows a wider range of developers and innovators to contribute to the development of new technologies and solutions. This can lead to faster development cycles, more rapid prototyping, and, ultimately, faster time to market for new products and services.

Open technologies reduce friction in the development process by providing a common set of rules and guidelines that all parties can follow. This reduce friction and the need for negotiation compromise between different stakeholders. It helps to ensure that products and services are developed in a consistent and predictable manner. This can lead to lower development costs, fewer errors and incompatibilities, and a more streamlined development process.

Overall, open technologies plays a critical role in driving innovation, increasing interoperability and compatibility, and reducing friction in the development process. They enable the more open and collaborative approach to technology development, benefiting users and developers alike.

While every software company leverages open source libraries, actively contributing to open source is not as popular. For multiple reasons, good and bad, companies are still reluctant to invest time in developing technologies that will also be available to their competitors. Inner sourcing, however, is something that most companies are familiar with. I want to talk a little bit about inner sourcing, because in a lot of ways, open sourcing is an evolved form of inner sourcing.

Companies sees value in sharing internally component libraries, cloud services, and similar things because of the operational efficiency it provides. Whoever built an authentication service knows how much work it can be. You don't want to have to have every team or product at your company re-implement the same thing over and over again.

Open source offers similar advantages, and in some cases can multiply the positive effects. Companies that have mature inner sourcing policies should consider open sourcing as an option. There are numerous examples of companies that have chosen to release proprietary technologies as open source software, even though those technologies provided a competitive edge. For example, Facebook open sourced their React front-end framework, and Netflix released their Spinnaker deployment platform. By making these tools available to everyone, these companies gave up control of technologies that add strategic value, but allowed them to reach a broader community of users and contributors who could help improve the software, increasing the quality, impact, and importance those technologies were having.

Autodesk decided to embrace open source contribution. Open source is one of Autodesk's core values. We have people and teams dedicating time-- sometimes all of their time-- to open source.

During the lifetime of a project, the possibility of open sourcing is being discussed. These discussions can happen at the initial stage of a project or within very mature projects.

At Autodesk, the journey toward open sourcing technology begins with the identification of an opportunity. Once an opportunity has been identified, it is discussed with the strategic leadership of the company.

The second step involves a review process, where an independent committee assesses the benefits, risks, and landscape, and the exposure of the project. Any gaps are identified and work required is evaluated. This is done to ensure that the project is a good fit for Autodesk and aligns with the company's goal.

Assuming that the project passes the review process, the third step is approval. At this stage, the open source committee, the executive leadership, and the legal team evaluate the project and decide if it should be approved for open sourcing. Only projects that meet the company's standard for quality, security, and compliance are approved for open source.

Once the project is approved, the fourth and final step is execution. The project is readied for open sourcing and collaboration between the engineering, go-to market, and strategy teams. This involves making sure that the code is properly licensed, creating documentation for the project, and preparing the community for its release. The path to open technologies at Autodesk is a carefully considered and deliberate process, with each step designed to ensure that the company's goals and standards are met.

At Autodesk, open source contribution comes in various forms. In this talk, I will highlight two open source organizations that are exclusive to the media and entertainment industry, and in which Autodesk has played a crucial role. Despite their uniqueness, the reasons for their creation and the issues they aim to resolve are likely to be widespread across various industries.

Together, we will investigate the reason behind the inception of these groups and the challenges they are striving to overcome. Additionally, we will delve into the strategic advantages for Autodesk in being active participant in these initiatives.

Before we go there, as we may have people from different industry attending, we will review some key characteristics of the media and entertainment industry that triggered creation of these open communities. In the film industry, there is a unique need for collaboration between competitive companies and vendors. Modern movies are being worked on by hundreds of artists working for dozens of different companies. The assets and the shots being produced by these different entities needs to be shared so they can be assembled in a cohesive and compelling narrative.

However, collaboration is complicated by a couple of factors. The first factor is that the film industry is not limited by the real world. If a director can imagine it, an artist using creation tools from Autodesk and others, can make it. Studios are continually adopting new tools to bring the impossible to life on screen.

The second factor is that the development life cycle of movies is relatively short and subject to tight deadlines. Movies can last forever, but there are no real upkeep costs or need to maintain or repair a movie once it's completed. Therefore, technologies developed to produce a movie are not always built to last. Production teams are very short-sighted vision, and are willing to take shortcuts to meet deadlines and cut production costs.

These two factors create an environment where the innovation pace is fast and going in all directions. Through these pressures, studios develop technologies by themselves without waiting for features to be available in commercial products. Some of these technologies are reused, while others are only used for the movie for which they were built.

The demand for collaboration and rapid innovation often conflict with each other. To reconcile these competing priorities, standardization is required. That's why there has been increasing momentum toward building an open source ecosystem in the film and game industry.

For our first example of how open source can be leveraged as a competitive advantage, I want to introduce you to the Alliance for OpenUSD. VFX and animation pipelines consist of the processes and people that work together to bring breathtaking scenes and characters to life for film and TV. It entails everything from pre-production and pre-visualization through 3D modeling, rigging, animation, effects, rendering, and more. In the production of computer-generated content for films and games, studios generate, store, and transmit large quantities of 3D data, which we call scene description data.

Each of the applications in the pipeline typically has its own spatial form of scene description data tailored to the specific needs and workflows of the application, which is neither readable nor editable by other applications. Exchanging this scene description data across the different stages of the pipeline requires multiple manipulation and transformation of data. This exercise is cumbersome, time consuming, and error prone.

OpenUSD was built to address this challenge. Created by Pixar Animation studio in 2016 to meet the demands of their complex 3D production pipeline, OpenUSD is a platform and ecosystem offering robust interoperability across tools, data, and workflows. It's a complete foundation for developers and creators to describe, compose, and simulate large-scale 3D projects.

USD is now being embraced beyond VFX and animation by industries such as architecture, engineering, construction, automotive, and manufacturing. It enables robust interchange between digital content creation, CAD, and simulation tools with expanding set of schemas covering domains like geometry, shading, lighting, and physics.

OpenUSD is a perfect example of what we discussed earlier in the film and game industry segment. It has been created to address a collaboration issue that arose from fast-paced technologies and siloed tools that evolve in all directions.

Back in August, we joined forces with Pixar, Adobe, Apple, and Nvidia as the inaugural members of the Alliance for OpenUSD. We're proud to be part of this industry-wide effort to make it easier for artists to collaborate and communicate more actively across projects, tools, and teams.

At launch, the alliance will focus on building a written specification detailing the current core functionality of open USD. This will enable greater compatibility and wider adoption, integration, and implementation of USD. The alliance intends to pursue robust liaison relationships with a variety of standards, organization, and open source consumption that are working in the 3D world ecosystem. These liaisons will allow us to share ideas, avoid duplicative of overlapping effort, and provide adequate support for compatibility and interoperability testing to ensure that OpenUSD can provide critical components for a community to build, maintain, and [INAUDIBLE] 3D spaces.

We're really excited to see all the new places this alliance will take USD, enabling new tools and workflows, bringing 3D into a new platform, like web and mobile, in a standardized way, and working together to understand the right way to leverage USD for complex challenges, from detailed animated worlds to the real world.

Being an active member of an important open source effort like USD is a huge investment. So why are we doing this? The media and entertainment industry has for years used USD as its de facto standard. Making this an official standard de-risks the investment made in this technology by studios using it, and prevents the industry from splitting into fragmented efforts, allowing continued collective advancement.

Autodesk invested in USD because it saw the potential of the technology. Working on their own proprietary tools, like Maya and 3ds Max, we immediately understood the interoperability problem it was solving. When Pixar decided to open source their technology in 2016, we rapidly became important contributors and adopters of USD. The transition to USD was inevitable, and we wanted to lead that change rather than following it. Through our already and assume engagement, we became important member of the USD space, which led to us forming the Alliance for OpenUSD with other key contributors in the industry.

As we look into the future, USD will empower creators with new tools and workflow, making 3D content readily available on the web, mobile, and other platforms through a standardized approach. We'll also see it expand to manage complex workflows in other tangent industries, like EAC and manufacturing.

The second example of how Autodesk leverages open source as a competitive advantage is the Academy Software Foundation. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science is a professional honorary organization, and their goal is to progress the art and science of movies. The Academy is best known for the Oscars ceremony, where they recognize excellent achievement in filmmaking. The main ceremonies highlight actors, actresses, and the most impactful movies of the past year.

But the Academy celebrates all aspects of the movie industry. Technical artists, scientists, and technologies that contribute to these films are honored at the Scientific and Technical Awards ceremony. One of the role of the scientific and technical branch of the Academy is to serve as a primary forum for problem solving, discussion, and research regarding important technological issues facing the industry.

Between 2016 and 2018, the Academy conducted a comprehensive two-year survey to identify possible areas of impact for the industry. The survey revealed that 84% of the companies-- of the studios were utilizing open source software to accelerate development and improve collaboration, but that numerous challenges were slowing broader adoption. The existing unstructured ad hoc model in place will not stand the test of time.

The challenges they found included siloed development, managing multiple versions of libraries in an unorganized ecosystem, and confusion in the governments and licensing models of the libraries. There was an appetite and a need to resolve these challenges in the industry. Remember what we said about the film industry earlier-- it's an industry that evolves quickly, that is used to push technological and software innovation in-house, not always waiting for commercial products to innovate. Open source is crucial for that industry to accelerate in-house development while maintaining interoperability between studios they collaborate with and the multitudes of software they use.

Following that survey, the Academy reached out to a well-known open source group to help them in their struggles, the Linux Foundation. As a result of the collaboration with the Linux Foundation, the Academy Software Foundation was founded in August 2018. The mission of that foundation will be to increase the quality and quantity of open source contributions by establishing a governance model, a legal framework, and a community infrastructure that lowers the barrier to entry for developing and using open source softwares.

They didn't create that foundation alone. To increase the chances of success of that initiative, the group joined forces with important actors in the industry. They reached out to studios and vendors who were interested solving the same type of problem. Autodesk was one of the company that saw the benefits of such a foundation. Autodesk understands and appreciates the diversity of media and entertainment customers' workflow, and the critical role open source project play in making them successful. Five years since its founding, the Academy Software Foundation has grown into a vibrant ecosystem of open source projects, working groups, and contributors who collaborate to drive progress and innovation in the software-- and software for the motion picture industry.

Let's look together at some projects in which Autodesk is particularly active, and how Autodesk is using this investment as a competitive advantage. OpenColorIO is an open source color management library that enables consistent color pipelines across VFX and animation software, and works with scene linear and high dynamic range media at very high quality. It allows production to define custom color workflows, and then easily deploy them across multiple applications from different vendors.

OpenColorIO was initially developed at Sony Pictures Imageworks and open sourced in 2010. Adopted by many companies, including Autodesk, it lacked GPU and other key features needed for our product, like Flame and Lustre.

In 2017, with Imageworks no longer actively maintaining OCIO, Autodesk led the development of version 2, contributing proprietary technology to add those missing capabilities. Autodesk had early interest in OpenColorIO to unify color management across products and enable interoperability. By reviving the open source project, and updating it, we establish it as a de facto standard, benefiting both our tools and the VFX industry overall. Our technical expertise and exposure to multiple studio pipelines positioned us to evolve OCIO in a way that will benefit many studios. In 2019, OCIO became the second project accepted into the Academy Software Foundation, and Autodesk continues to play a leading role in its development.

OpenTimelineIO is an open source interchange format for editorial timeline information. Synchronization on a timeline is a very important concept in moviemaking. Final video sequences are a composition of multiple video and audio tracks, and it's imperative that these tracks are properly synchronized. Anyone that has experienced listening to a movie where the sound is not in sync with the video can relate to that.

During the production phase, there is also tons of other information that needs to be synchronized to a timeline, like transitions, effects, and metadata of all types. Autodesk is interested in OTIO for its potential to extend product like Flame, RV, and Moxion that are used in editorial and reviews workflow.

OTIO provides a standard way for this project to exchange timeline information and associated metadata. For example, RV, a review tool, uses OTIO to store frame-specific annotations in contexts in a sequence of frame. By supporting OTIO instead of proprietary formats, Autodesk makes it easier for customers to integrate our product into their customized production pipelines, many of which may already leverage OCIO. While counterintuitive, an open ecosystem gives customers more confidence to invest in our products knowing that they won't be locked in into a closed proprietary system. Autodesk became an important contributor to OpenTimelineIO in 2021, and the standard is now supported by many other products, like ShotGrid and RV.

The Open Review Initiative is a project that was created earlier this year. It's the latest ASWF project in which Autodesk has been closely involved. The Open Review Initiative mission is to build a unified toolset for playback, review, and approval of motion picture media. Autodesk, alongside [INAUDIBLE] and Imageworks, have contributed both resources and products to that initiative.

The review and approval process is central to the workflow at any VFX animation or game studio. It ensured the quality of the work being produced, and aligns the creative vision between the studio and the client.

Production pipeline usually involves a series of sequential tasks, like modeling, rigging, lighting, and compositing. Between each task, the work produced is reviewed, commented, and polished before being approved and move to the next stage. At any stage, the asset being reviewed can be brought back to a previous stage. The backend for the review and revision is vital for achieving the highest quality output.

By collaborating to the Open Review Initiative and donating RV to the Academy Software Foundation, we are giving a second life to RV, and it allows us to be an active actor in the definition and materialization of the playback review and approval toolset. In addition to RV, Autodesk also provide leads architects and maintainers for a project technical steering committee. Through our participation in the Open Review Initiative, we're enabling RV to continue benefiting the industry, and ensuring we have a seat at the table as discussion about the feature review and approval happens. Later in the talk, we will take a deeper look at that specific contribution, looking into how and why Autodesk ended up open sourcing a commercial product it was selling.

As you can see, Autodesk is involved at multiple levels in the Academy Software Foundation. We are a part of the governance board, part of many of the technical advisory council, and we are heavily contributing to multiple projects hosted by the academy. By adapting and evolving open source software, Autodesk is strengthening the position of its flagship product. Embracing open source lowers Autodesk products' adoption cost, as users are interacting with concepts and standards that are well documented and often already in use at their company. Adoption of these standards also improved the interoperability between Autodesk products, creating a better experience for users creating contents using different products. Our involvement in governance board and technical steering committees give us valuable insights and input to the issues being debated by the industry. This allows us to stay ahead of emerging trends and proactively adapt our products for upcoming changes.

Let's conclude this talk by going through a use case I was recently personally involved in. We discussed earlier that Autodesk donated a product to the Academy Software Foundation when the Open Review Initiative was created. My team at Autodesk and I were responsible for making this donation a reality. Today we have mostly talked about the advantages of open source, but doing open source is not always easy, and while it has many advantages, it also has its challenges. We learned a lot during that project, and today I'd like to share our experience open sourcing a mature, established, commercial product with you.

RV is a high-end performance image and sequencing playback tool. It offers accurate color representation, large file support, and guaranteed playback rate at high resolution, as well as local media access. It's mostly used in post-production dailies for review and approval workflows with supervisors and executives, where they can review progress and take notes and context of the shot being reviewed. Its plug-in architecture and powerful, configurable graph engine allows studios to evolve and adapt the tool to their needs. RV was originally sold as a standalone product, but is now available at no cost in open source version under the name Open RV.

Why open source an award-winning software? The decision to open source made a lot of sense for both Autodesk and the community. Review is becoming a commoditized capability, and we struggle to evolve the product at the pace user expected. Maintaining RV was expensive. Even though it was widely adopted across the industry, the number of total users was stagnant. We faced a dilemma. A complex product beloved by key clients, yet with minimal growth potential.

Autodesk announced plans to discontinue RV a few years ago, but [INAUDIBLE] was reversed, it damaged RVs reputation. Usage declined as customers fear investing in a product that could disappear abruptly. By open sourcing RV, we secure its future, assuring studios that this vital technology will remain available.

Open sourcing also allows to address the true [INAUDIBLE], allowing us to tap into a larger pool of developers to accelerate product feature development. Clients now have the options to contribute if they have a very critical need.

Once open sourced, it becomes easier to establish priorities with customers and to partner on the materialization of the feature and improvements they needed. They can identify and fix the issue themselves, allowing to remove potential blockers slowing down their development. The possibility of opening RV has been discussed multiple times internally and externally. At that time, the stars were aligned. Autodesk was ready for it, the community was ready for it, ASWF was the right home for RV, and the timing with the launch of the Open Review Initiative was perfect.

Open sourcing is a lot of work. RV is a 15-year-old software, has more than 15,000 files and 8 million lines of code. It also relies on more than 30 different libraries and components.

With the code being made public, there are multiple aspects you need to consider, technical and non-technical-- the external components being used, the quality of the code, even if the comments within your code will become visible. And you could become a legal liability for your company, or the organization you are donating the code to.

Open sourcing a product is a rare opportunity. By sharing our process, I hope to provide some insights into open sourcing for others who may be considering it.

With the strategic decision made to open source RV, we still needed to decide on the best approach. The first step was accessing the existing technology through an open source lens. Were there any proprietary technology we wanted to keep private? Did anything in the product architecture preclude simply open sourcing RV as is, or will major changes be necessary? In RV's case, we determine the product could be open sourced with only minor modifications.

The first phase of the plan for open sourcing RV was simple-- remove any blockers. That meant removing preparatory codecs, video outputs, as well as Autodesk code that could not be open sourced. At this point, the decision to open source RV was made public, but we still needed to determine which specific software component to release.

In the second phase, where possible and in collaboration with the development community, we aim to gradually reintroduce components from the commercial version that were removed in phase one, with the goals of aligning the open source and commercial products as closely as possible. We will also invest heavily in creating that new partnership with the Academy Software Foundation community, leading the evolution of open RV.

A lot of the work done during phase one was non-functional, and didn't bring a lot of direct value to the community. That work was split into two big categories-- foundational work and open sourcing work. The most technically challenging part was modernizing the build system that was over 10 years old. It took about four months of our development team to make Open RV alive. Revamping the build system was at least half of that.

Other non-negligible part of the work that was done was non-technical. The legal implication of such a project are not to be underestimated. Open [INAUDIBLE] sourcing a commercial product and donating it to an external organization brings a lot of constraint, way more than we are used to when open sourcing component as part of the Autodesk ecosystem. The additional requirement of aligning Autodesk and ASWF legal expectation caused us some headaches, especially at the end of the project.

In this presentation, we talked a lot about the advantages of open technologies. As with anything, open source also comes with constraints that need to be evaluated before you go to the open source route. While it's recognized that open source can be an accelerator, it is usually slower to progress open source projects versus privately owned projects.

The main reason for this is that important decisions, code changes, priorities, needs to be driven by the community. For some projects, like most of the Academy Software Foundation project, there is a committee that can vote on priorities, and getting to a decision can take time. By open sourcing, you are sometime trading power of the masses that can move a project very far for slower execution. It must also not be ignored that when you open source a project, you are losing full control over that project.

Open source projects often have a governance structure. Who will be making the decision, prioritize where the community time is spent? Is it the community? Is it the committee? The group under which you are open sourcing the project may have a predefined governance structure.

[INAUDIBLE] in that which cadence will you interact with that community? Do you need to share a roadmap? Discussions that used to happen behind closed wall now may happen in front of the community. It is important that you learn, and it is important that your team, and especially your leadership, understand that.

Open source also have an impact on the developers if they are to remain maintainers of the project. Further contribution will be public, exposing one's code to the public's eyes. Not everyone may be comfortable with that new reality.

Finally, open source can be an important investment in time. If you want or need the project to remain successful, it will probably require your company to support and maintain the project for a while. A lot of the credibility of an open source project comes from our activities.

Overall, the Open RV project was a success. It accomplished our initial objective of bringing back trust in the RV product and the Autodesk brand. It also had some interesting unexpected impact.

The first impact is that while we were expecting a huge share of our customers to move to open source, while some are investigating the possibility, the bigger impact was observed on the commercial version. With the [INAUDIBLE] of RV guarantee, now that the code is in the hands of the community, we've noticed more activity on the commercial version of RV. New releases are being adopted more rapidly, and we've seen the level of engagement with customers significantly increase.

This open source project also had a positive impact on the development team working on the project. Open source has a different aura. Users are friendlier and more willing to engage. That second life we were giving to a project that the team cared about came as a breath of fresh air and uplifted the morale of the team. Finally, our interaction with client for both the commercial and the open source version of RV considerably improved. Clients are more engaged, more patient in their conversations.

Let's conclude by reviewing some of the learnings that were shared today. Today we learned that open source is a lever that can be used as a strategic advantage. With the Alliance for OpenUSD example, we saw that open source can be leveraged to lead change and expand the reach of products by leveraging the influence and the stickiness of open standard. By analyzing how and why the Academy Software Foundation was created, we surfaced that open source can help take collaboration between people and tools to another level.

Finally, we learned through the open source story that benefits of open source can sometimes go beyond initial expectation, having unexpected effects like boosting morale and energizing the team and the community supporting a technology.

At Autodesk University, you will probably understand that Autodesk is putting a lot of effort into building a platform that will transform how our users create content today. Autodesk believes so much in open source that it is putting it at the center of its platformization strategy. Autodesk Flow is built with open standards as its core, heavily leveraging USD, OTIO, and other similar standards. This creates a common language to tie all your data together no matter the tool you use, the role you play, or the location you work from.

Thanks a lot for attending this talk. I hope you found the presentation interesting. And if you have any questions, or want to follow up with me about anything that was discussed today, or things that were not discussed today, please feel free to reach out on LinkedIn. Thank you.